Hits: Mix Master Mike

Is a turntable a musical instrument? Is it hard to play? Can it produce original sounds-sounds that could be defined as original music? Answer the question honestly: is a DJ … a musician?

Mix Master Mike is a DJ. Not a DJ like the one at your Friday night club, headphones on one ear, mixing together all your favorite rap and R&B hits. Mix Master Mike is to deejaying what Jaco Pastorius was to the bass-on a whole different level. He’s a turntable instrumentalist-perhaps one of the best, a prominent member of the infamous Invisibl Skratch Piklz. This is his debut solo album. If you’re not into turntablism as music, you’re going to hate it.

One second a single note from a cello in the background of a Led Zeppelin song appears, only to disappear and never be heard from again. Moments later, two bars of a drumbeat from an old school hip-hop jam show up, then poof-gone. The whole album is like this: he breaks down songs and beats to their raw elements, and then strings those elements together through scratching to make a completely new song. It’s the future of music, or at least a future of a certain genre of music-a genre which many believe has no credibility, that is if they knew about it at all.